DANCE? - joellyn powers

She likes to listen to slow, sexy songs and imagine herself dancing. Maybe for a crowd or maybe not. She would be in a spot-lit bar – no. In a pool of moonlight in a bedroom, a half-dressed man reclining on the bed, watching her drop articles of clothing to the floor. My God, she will think, my God. How did I arrive here?

Out her window she sees stars, or maybe hundreds of faraway people smoking cigarettes in the dark. There is no way to decipher extinguished light from light yet to be extinguished. She closes the curtains. She is in her underwear and a K-mart t-shirt and her thighs have stretch marks and little red dots. She tries to reach a bottle of lotion without unfolding her legs from beneath her, but it is too far away. Her fingers stroke the air.

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